Is a listing in this directory really worth $365/year??

[adriandg]

Recently i noticed one of our competitors is getting a citation out of a directory called Refer Links.  I contacted them to find out their pricing, and to be listed in that directory it is $365/year.

I noticed that all the links to the websites are cloaked with php redirects and rel=nofollows' so i doubt it would do much for our page rank, so strictly from a citation standpoint, is this worth it?

Here is our competitors listing:

http://www.referlinks.com/listing/all-canadian-self-storage-inc--mobile-self-storage.html

[AdoptionHelp]

Everyone is going to place different value in different parts of their marketing strategy, so only you can ultimately decide if its worth it or not.

That being said I would not pursue this service. They have a decent traffic ranking in Canada, but not enough to warrant what they're asking for, in my view. And with the nofollow and php redirects, you're getting no SEO benefit from the service, only whatever traffic they send directly from their site.

[Syed1]

I wouldn't pay that amount even if it was a permanent listing. Certain Nofollows do pass juice and they are not completely useless but this one is not worth the investment considering the price.  Even if it was dofollow, just look at the worth of the page not just the root domain (which is not that great either).

[RyanKent]

OFF-TOPIC reply: @Storwell

I am offering this "free advice" in an effort to be helpful so I hope you take this the right way.

You are spending a lot of time focusing on your competitors when you have plenty of opportunities for basic on-page SEO within your own site. I know you have been around SEOmoz for a bit and have already read the Beginner's Guide to SEO, but read it again!

Work on 1 chapter per day or whenever you have time and apply the principles directly to your site. I would not worry about competitors until your on-site SEO was solid. Last week I shared an issue with your alt text. You have a lot of fantastic images but their tags are all identical: "self storage mississauga tour". You use that tag a dozen times.

Make one improvement to your site today. Go through the entire site, find every image and update their alt tags to an accurate description which also includes helpful key words. Examples:

Self Storage Security

Storage Garage

Self Storage Area

Think of any terms that users may use to search for your services but also apply to the image.

Climbing to the top is much faster if you can pull yourself up rather then pulling your competitors down.

[Syed1]

I would listen to Ryan's advice.

The sites foundation (coding, on-page SEO) take priority over link building or any other different web marketing strategies. Once the foundation is strong, other strategies become much easier to execute - in your case,  if you get the off-page right, you will see much more returns from every link you will be earning.

[adriandg]

Thanks Ryan.  I have been meaning to make those changes to the onpage stuff.  I did fix the title tags as you sugested.  And from some other link building we did recently we are now ranking #1 for that local SERP, so i am actually somewhat hesitant to change anything on that page right now.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=storage+mississauga&pws=0&hl=en&num=10

[RyanKent]

A quote I enjoy...."Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true".

You earned the #1 spot which is great. It sounds like your plan is to wait for someone else to step up and take your spot and then react. I prefer to be proactive but the choice is yours.